There will be a great experiment happening in the blazing Arizona valley this summer, and nearly the entire baseball world will follow its developments.

Arizona Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers, known for rebuilding bullpens, sledge-hammered his team's roster and started building a new one almost as soon as the World Series ended.

Cody Ross received a three-year contract from Arizona in the offseason. (AP Photo)

He opted to not bring back 15 players from last season’s roster. His moves were bold, shocking and a little absurd. The reworking of the names above the lockers was an attempt to build a team to satisfy not only Towers, but also his gruff manager, Kirk Gibson.

Basically, the Diamondbacks resemble a team that plays the game as Gibson did: with grit, scrappiness and a dirty uniform.

The one thing people have seemed to overlook during this Arizona overhaul is that Gibson was about as talented as anyone in the game when he was at his best. Gibson was a star. And once he got to Los Angeles and helped the Dodgers win their last World Series in 1988, he was a superstar, the kind of marketable player who help franchises sell season-ticket packages.

Towers ignored that when he got rid of players who seemed to be his most talented.

Justin Upton, the team’s only real marketable player, was traded for Martin Prado and prospects. Prado can play several positions (though he's Arizona's regular third baseman for now) and secretes “grit” when he sweats. Towers also moved one of the game’s top pitching prospects, Trevor Bauer, whom the team drafted third overall just 18 months before, to the Cleveland Indians essentially for a shortstop, Didi Gregorius, who has a .317 career on-base percentage in the minors.

That’s not all. Towers also traded center fielder Chris Young, whose output never caught up to his potential but whose willingness to run through a wall for his franchise should have never been questioned; in fact, he almost did that last year, hurting himself and derailing his production in the process. Towers also signed outfielder Cody Ross, another “grit” guy, to a three-year deal worth $26 million.

“All I ask is to give them a chance,” Towers told season-ticket holders last month at the team’s Fan Fest, which is not something you ever want to tell fans when talking about your remade roster. “I think a lot of people like to judge trades on the day that they’re made. Let’s give it a year, two years, and we’ll see. I think we’ll end up having the last laugh. I really do.”

But this team isn’t built to win three years from now. Maybe prospects like Gregorius and pitcher Tyler Skaggs will have developed into productive major leaguers in the next few seasons, but projected starters like Prado (29 years old), Ross (32), second baseman Aaron Hill (31 this week), catcher Miguel Montero (30 in July) and outfielder Jason Kubel (31 in May) are here to win now.

And none of them has anything close to the raw talent of Upton (26 in August), Young (29) or Bauer (22). None of them has the talent Gibson had.

“I think that’s what people don’t realize,” a National League scout said during spring training last week. “Gibby was as talented as any player on the field when he was in his prime. That could have been Upton. That could have been Bauer. When guys have the chance to be that kind of player, you deal with whatever else you don’t like about them as people, especially when they are still under team control.”

Upton was a season removed from being a legitimate MVP candidate in his age 23-24 season, and his declining production in 2012 can be attributed to injuries.

But while Gibson always publicly praised Upton’s ability and work ethic, something else was being spewed privately. The team had tried to trade Upton three separate times during the past two years, then didn’t like that Upton didn’t like being part of the rumors. It seemed like the Diamondbacks were trying to make Upton into the bad guy in order to sell the public on his eventual trade.

The tactic, if indeed true, never worked in the clubhouse. Upton was liked by teammates. His flaw, besides being “unproductive” based on expectations (never mind he is still young), was that he didn’t play “Gibbyball,” which is to say Upton didn’t chew on nails to show how much “guts” he had.

As for Bauer, he wasn’t well-liked. He had dustups with teammates, most notably Montero, and his cerebral attitude toward pitching didn’t sit well with most in the organization. You’d think the team would have done its homework and decided whether it could live with Bauer’s quirkiness before drafting him third overall. For as good as he might become, Gregorius (23) probably never would have been picked third overall.

“Last year, you had some groups of guys who kind of stayed to themselves,” Montero told Yahoo! Sports. “It’s more of a team (this year). It’s a very cohesive group.”

Cohesion only goes so far. Talent usually goes farther. Don’t be fooled by the San Francisco Giants' “chemistry” last year. That team had serious talent, from Matt Cain to Buster Posey to Pablo Sandoval to Madison Bumgarner. Go back and look at World Series participants over the past 10 years. All 20 teams had great talent whether it was old or young, expensive or cheap.

What the Diamondbacks are doing is new, attempting to win in a division that includes the Giants and the star-laden Dodgers, attempting to win with more guts than talent. While 29 other teams believe the other way is more conducive to that ultimate goal, Arizona is walking into the summer scoffing at that philosophy while plenty of doubters keep tabs on this experiment.